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Miami Herald staff writer Douglas Hanks and Bloomberg News contributed to this report.
Home contracts fell nationwide in July for the first time in three months, a sign that lower prices and borrowing costs aren’t luring in more buyers.
July’s 1.3 percent decrease in the index of pending home sales followed a 2.4 percent gain in June, the National Association of Realtors said Monday in Washington. Economists forecast a 1 percent drop, according to a Bloomberg News survey.
The disappointing national numbers arrived the same day as local numbers from the Miami Association of Realtors hinted at a slowdown in South Florida’s housing market, too.
In Broward, July’s pending sales are up 4 percent over 2010 levels for condominiums and houses. That’s compared to a 24 percent year-over-year increase in June and a 20 percent spike in May.
In Miami-Dade, pending sales grew 19 percent in July over July 2010. That’s down from June’s 33 percent increase and May’s 29 percent jump.
The local numbers aren’t adjusted for seasonality, so month-to-month comparisons can be skewed by the ebb and flow of the home buying season and other factors. In July, Broward pending sales hit 8,124 contracts, a 3.4 percent decline from June. The 12,014 contracts signed by potential home buyers in Miami-Dade last month barely moved the dial: They were up less than 1 percent from June.
Terri Bersach, head of the Broward council for the Miami Realtors group, said the sales pace remains brisk and that she has not detected any buyer pullback brought on by financial turmoil in August.
“We haven’t seen a slowdown yet,’’ said Bersach, a Coldwell Banker real estate agent in Weston. “This week in my office, we’re negotiating a $1 million deal.”
Across South Florida, sales have been increasing while prices remain depressed. With national unemployment at 9.1 percent and the prospect of more foreclosures in the pipeline mean it may take years to clear the oversupply of houses, a sign the market is struggling to stabilize.
“Housing is still on the ropes,” Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York, said in a note to clients.
Shepherdson said he was concerned that “the chaos in the stock markets might have persuaded a greater proportion of buyers to walk away after signing contracts,” leaving sales short of the level implied by the pending data.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/08/29/2381203/home-contracts-fall-in-us-slow.html#ixzz1ZMRBDKmg
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